Television networks often get great ratings by airing life and death stories. But if viewers could watch a school hostage situation LIVE, the ratings would be... well, killer. Joe and Mabel Sixpack will kick back with a bowl of chips and watch till they drop. Or until the hostages do. So when a last place network gets the exclusive of a real-time scenario in a high school, the story grabs the nation by the throat and won't let go. Alex Jensen is a take-no-prisoners reporter without any ethics and a soul to match. But she's stuck at a small town local affiliate. When she's taken hostage along with a group of journalism students during a high school career day, she has the exclusive of a lifetime, a real life episode of and "24 and ". Suddenly Alex finds a network job dangling like a brass ring; all she has to do is stay alive to grab it. And there's a wild card in the deck; the journalism teacher, Belinda West, is a former reporter whose pure ethics ironically cost her a career. Will Alex put the lives of children in danger for the sake of a network job? Will Belinda's old reporting skills kick in and save the day? And how far will the people who run the network go for the sake of ratings? The 16th Minute is a story of the seductress known as fame and an industry that can easily tailor the facts to shape what we believe.